


I'm Not That Kind

by White_Rabbits_Clock



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alpha Clint Barton, Alpha Steve Rogers, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Beta Natasha Romanov, Gen, I tried to keep it fair, Not A Fix-It, Not Steve Rogers Friendly, Omega Tony Stark, Omega Wanda Maximoff, Steve centric, Steve is entirely too from the forties, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony centric, a little bit, even though I am so not Steve Rogers friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-01-29 17:39:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12635943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/White_Rabbits_Clock/pseuds/White_Rabbits_Clock
Summary: Tony Stark is not that kind of omega. He isn't looking for a bond with anyone, alpha or otherwise. He isn't interested in a pack, though he certainly winds up building an atypical one. He definitely isn't interested in going off his scent blockers, which he's had since he was 16. The only one who doesn't see that? Steve Rogers, of course.





	1. Not That Kind

**Author's Note:**

> All comments, including concrit is welcome, guys.

Steve Rogers, the legend, is an american gentleman of the highest caliber… for the forties. Steve Rogers, the man, has seventy years’ worth of civil rights and changing perceptions and physical differences to get through before he even begins to understand what he’s doing in twenty first century America. So suffice it to say that it was projected to be a few months before Steve Rogers, the man, was what Coulson and various other people have taken to calling “cafe ready”.

He’s not sure why they settled on a cafe, but whenever they use the turn of phrase, they are referring to the ability to have a normal conversation in a normal setting that does not go south due to cultural differences and time-induced ignorance. So Steve is not the sort of person who happens to be cafe ready. 

Mess hall ready? Maybe. After a week out of the ice and doing nothing but observing all the differences between then and now, he thinks he could go into the cafeteria of SHIELD, where everyone knows who he is and why he might say something offensive, and have a normal conversation. After two weeks, they might not even need to gently remind or tell him for the first time why he should never address anyone as “omega” if he doesn’t know their name, though it was perfectly okay in the army. People used to do it to him all the time at boot camp.

They tell him not to worry about it, really. Plenty of people have a long way to go to being cafe ready, even though they were born in this time period. Plenty of people are from other countries, or have to be broken of dangerous and otherwise suspicious habits before they can be cafe ready. It’s good, it’s fine, it’s okay.They have faith that he can get there and the expertise to show him the way. Provided he does the reading.

With nothing to do but let them run tests, he makes it almost the entire way through the thick packet of etiquette he would need to follow until he got the hang of this day and age and could tell what is and is not all that important. In fact, he’s about ten pages away from the end when he gets the call to Assemble.from a certain one eyed asshole in an abandoned and kind of creepy boxing gym. 

Two weeks. That’s how long he got to get cafe ready, and he’s no where near it. It’s fucking terrible because now they’re sticking him in with a bunch of people who have to put up a very good act in order to be cafe ready and he’s just not sure he can deal.

The Howling Commandos were made up of seven alpha fighters, and three field medics, two omegas and a beta, the latter of which served as a sort of auxiliary major to himself. Thinking back, it’s a good thing he did, and that he didn’t try to upstage the captain, despite being one higher in rank. The Howlies would have been a lot worse off without Gabriel Jones.

The lines within the group were very simple: everyone’s deadly, but the alphas are the ones that fight, and the omegas are the ones that heal, and the beta bridges the gap between the two. 

The avengers are a different story altogether. 

For one thing, there are six of them, not ten. Banner manages to be the least conducive beta ever, and Steve is told not to worry about it, cause he’s got an alpha tucked in there somewhere. The Widow, a beta, and Hawkeye, an alpha who is entirely too beta-like, should definitely either be a pair or have been split up long ago, but they are somehow still functioning normally. Thor smells like he’s mated and yet not, which is okay. What is not okay is the pining that normally goes along with this interim state right before one finds out if they’ve been accepted by their chosen or not is strangely absent. Steve doesn’t think it’s the grief masking it either. It just makes no sense. 

And finally, finally, mother of all headaches, the coup de grace of conundrums, there is Anthony Stark- son of Howard Stark, and everything like his alpha father. Except he is no alpha. It’s obvious, his omega status, but only when Steve stands close enough. This short stack with the designer attitude and patented sarcasm much more advanced than even Howard had achieved needs to not, as one of the cafeteria ladies would say. What is also obvious is the flatness to the scent. As though Steve is inhaling the fumes of a candle- meant to burn the same constant smell, no matter how hot the fire or how long the wick is lit. He needs to be at home, trying to fix what he smells like. It’s… wrong. And alienating. And gross besides.

Distantly, the words he’d absorbed in the last two weeks tumble in his head, providing him with two useful bits of information. The first is a small paragraph, which, abbreviated, acknowledged the existence of few atypical people with traditionally mismatched traits, and that the openness and progress of the last several years had allowed those people to be themselves, rather than the expected version of themselves. That these people were not to be berated or chastised, though that certainly still happened, and that mentioning certain misgivings to them or to their superiors, coworkers, and inferiors could count as workplace harassment. 

The second is a paragraph on scent blockers, which allows the taker of them to go into a sort of partial sexual hibernation; they could still seek out mates and have carnal relations, but the urges that were purely presentation driven would be absent entirely, and others reduced as the pills blocked the hormones and returned the taker to a pre-presentation state of mind. The scent blockers are as unobtrusive as possible, and some forms, interestingly enough, only settled the hormones to that person’s baseline scent, and would keep it there, no matter where the person was at emotionally. 

Steve Rogers, the man, finds himself staring at both at the same time, and he finds he doesn’t like it. After a brief struggle, and recalling the whole workplace harassment thing, he decides that he can work with an odd egotistical scientist for the duration of the time it takes to get rid of this thrice damned cube. As long as it isn’t permanent.

Eventually, though (and that translates here to “ten minutes”) Steve manages to harken Tony Stark to the omegas who were too war hardened; who couldn’t be spoken to without imitating an alpha to keep the weak ones from approaching. Who said with their bodies, loud and clear for the whole regiment to hear, that they wished to be left alone.

Maybe Tony is like them. Maybe he just isn’t the kind of omega you actually try to bed.

It’s easier, after that, to argue and be mean (he’s not mean, but he’s heard that some thing he is) and try to override him with pheromones (here, the engineer just smirks). Tony isn’t that kind of omega. He can take it, and he’ll be fine.

But the battle came and went, and another omega, one who is Thor’s brother, is whisked away back to Asgard for punishment, and they all eat shawarma and it becomes obvious that Tony Stark would like to personally invite them all to stay in the tower- to use it as a base of operations while they wait to see if that was truly the last of the aliens. 

They agree. Tony is grinning so broadly, and Steve almost wants to ask who even helps him with money and why they would agree to this, but he doesn’t, because that’s not the way the world works anymore. They stay for a while, help with the beginnings of the relief efforts, before they try to leave. 

As it turns out, aliens may be over, but people taking advantage of other people who are down on their luck certainly is not, inspiring everyone to make a return.

Every other day, a superpowered crook needs to be stopped. Thefts are halted mid heist. Looters swarm over buildings laid open and raw by the chitauri. People are reeling, first from enemies in the sky, then from enemies at their sides. The destruction has inspired the formation and/or strengthening of gangs, and the leaders all have some sort of power that no one knows about until somebody dies. So while the city slowly puts itself back together, there are those within it that drag it down.

The Avengers try. They try so badly. Tony Stark diverts much of his SI staff away from their normal jobs for time and a half if they’ll work with the relief effort. Every day, each SI branch fills its quota for the amount that can go, while a skeleton crew keeps the business afloat. He sells to the New York government at half price until the damage is healed. His philanthropy is on a rampage. But his obedience is not.

Captain America, the man, tries to live up to Captain America, the legend, and be the leader Tony Stark needs. He tries to direct the man in the ways he’s most useful. Tries to get him to mesh with the team, but it doesn’t work. Iron Man’s pilot is painfully not recommended. Even after New York is on its feet again and kicking as strongly and as crotchety as it always does, even after the Avengers have settled into the tower, even after Tony finds his place as the funder and inventor, and one of the heavy hitters of the team, he is still difficult. Part of it, he knows, is the scent blockers. No matter what he does, no matter what he says, Tony Stark is always… so… flat. 

Steve tries to address that, and the conversation the two have is short and toxic. It begins with “we’re a team now and scent blockers are just weakening the glue that holds us together” and ends with “If you have an issue with my scent, Rogers, you may go the way you tried to before- away until needed”. There’s a lot of arguing between and on either side of those words. Steve tries so hard to at least get Tony to think about the blockers, but it doesn’t work. 

Captain America, the man, decides he will show Tony the different way things could have gone if he would just come off the pill. He just needs a bit of a push. Tony tends to favor damage control over brevity in a battle. When those two create a situation in which the Widow is nearly hurt when the violence should, by rights, already be over, it scares the shit out of Steve. They almost lost a man. He yells at Tony, and calls him selfish, and tells him he needs to let someone else decide, for once. He tells him, and this he does not regret, that those damn scent blockers kept him from thinking clearly. His pheromones are supposed to help guide the team, and they are missing.

He doesn’t smell that sickly, choking scent of a scared omega. He doesn’t see the cowering any proper version of Tony Stark ought to do, so he hasn’t gone too far. After all, Stark’s the one who started it.


	2. Never Was That Kind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We see the vast majority of the Avenger's arc through Tony's eyes, and Steve finally gets his wish via medical imperative.

Tony Stark remembers, vividly, that subtle do-what-I-want attitude from different faces and in different places. Howard’s had not been subtle at all, but Tony was a little boy. He first had to learn the words and understand their meanings before he could look and see what his world was made of. Howard wanted a son that didn’t flinch, whose omega scent didn’t ratchet up with fear in his presence. He, after all, did nothing wrong. So when Tony was sixteen and already a master at keeping his emotions tamped down, he started the long and arduous process of priming his body for long-term scent blockers. After that, Howard could pretend he was perfect, because you couldn’t smell otherwise. 

Obie had been… almost apologetic, in his own way. It was less do-what-I-want and more see-to-your-company, see-to-your-legacy, make-your-father-proud. Never what Obie wanted, but always what Obie found to be better for parties he was interested in. He was, for years, interested in Tony. But then Afghanistan happened, and Tony had lost something in dark caves and it wasn’t only Yinsen. After that, it wasn’t apologetic or round-about or for his best interest. It was just selfishness from Obie, and Tony could smell it on him. 

There had been others, all with excuses and things to hide the real, alpha intention. Of those, Pepper had been the most true, really. She had genuinely wanted the best both for herself and for Tony Stark. Eventually, though, it became obvious that there needed to be a layer of separation (read: romantic) in order for them to both come out on top. They are not in the same spheres anymore. Pepper’s world is all business, Tony’s is business and inventing and superheroing. There is a huge amount of overlap, but they are still separate.

The most raw had been the alphas in the Ten Rings. They at least, were up front about their sinisterness. 

And then there had been Fury and the fucking palladium poisoning and Natasha Romanoff’s stupid report that could be summarised as: Iron Man: Yes. Tony Stark: Not Recommended. And of course he wasn’t fucking recommended. He has never been recommended. His own company had no problem watching control wrested from him, after all. It had taken a three year process to root out the die-hard Obie fans (read: would finish what he started) and build up SI’s strength again. 

In any case, regardless of that report, he found himself facing down an alpha from the forties. From the fucking forties. Shit. There’s a reason Anthony is glad Howard came first, and not himself. He would not have made it in the forties. Especially if Steve is supposed to be the best of them, but he won’t make any attempt to learn new tech.

He can barely surf the web, even though this is the age of the internet. Forget memes. Internet humor is so beyond the captain it gives Tony a migraine. Steve can’t operate anything that doesn’t at least look like its predecessor, because fuck progress. And then, there’s the issue with the scent thing.

Ever since the Widow got her calf clipped and nearly fell to her death after being knocked off the back of the Villain of the Week, he’d taken a more open, less tactful approach to Tony’s life style. 

He’s tried to explain before, too, about his thing with damages. He’s tried to tell Steve that the people whose homes and belongings are destroyed “are up shit creek without a paddle so if we could please be more cost conscious-” But Steve rarely, if ever, listens to him. Finances are entirely Tony’s to deal with. Similarly, the place where he gets his numbers is SI and various other relief and relief affiliated organizations, which is also his thing and his alone.  He doesn’t get his numbers from battles. No one watches what goes on in the moment, they just count the costs later.

To be fair, the car should never be valued above the life of a teammate, but that doesn’t mean they can’t learn to fight smarter and play the game better. Every time he brings it up, though, they fight about whether or not Tony should quit his scent blockers. Steve’s logic is that if Tony learned to control the pheromones of those around him, it would be easier to cut the damage down. But he can’t give up the only layer of protection he has ever had. 

Stark has had scent blockers since he turned sixteen, and, with the exception of medical musts (which has only happened a couple of times in his entire forty three years), he will never go off them. He can’t let that happen, because all his enemies wind up being those he thought were friends. All the money in the world doesn’t buy him a way out of that. 

He tries to tell this to Steve, and the captain scoffs. “We wouldn’t do that to you,” he says. “Quit being so dramatic,” he says. “See you say that, but so does everyone else,” Tony answers. There are other things. Other, highly important things that he doesn’t mention, because he can tell that no concern of his is a concern of Steve’s.

Tony understands that it’s important to pack bonds for the omega to look after the emotional well being of the entire pack, and also to select a single mate. The two form a lead pair, which huge packs can then be built on. 

It’s not just that he is entirely too comfortable with having his emotions undetectable (though he works on his control despite the safety net, because accidents happen sometimes, and his health problems have reduced the amount of pills he can safely take), it’s that second part. It’s the “lead pair” part that he’s really bothered by. He and Steve work well enough together most of the time. Steve is captain in the combat and internal socialization spheres, Tony is captain in the political and economic spheres. Those things do not overlap when it comes to leadership. 

It’s just… Steve has all these ideas of what an Omega should be, and Tony knows that there’s no way Steve could really get it. Two years of a lifestyle less than .001% of the global population can say they lead doesn’t lend itself to skill in banal, baseline interactions. Tony knows this should earn Steve some grace because he just isn’t acclimated yet, but Steve just isn’t hearing anything. All he can smell is the non-information on Tony’s skin, and it drives him nuts.

In between it all, Bucky happens, the fall of SHIELD happens (told ya, Nicky. You can’t just go around manipulating all and sundry and expect to get away with it) and Tony spends months scrabbling through data and pulling shit off the internet and trying to reach agents who were SHIELD, through and through. But a lot of them die, so Tony tries to reach their families too, and some of them die. it’s terrible. It’s a tragedy. It’s a fucking nightmare that could have been avoided if the tech guru Steve and Natasha had access to had received a text. It didn’t happen though, and, in the end, Tony makes it all work out for Steve. 

He tries to confront Captain America, the man who thought he was a legend, only once, and he tries to keep his involvement out (he didn’t tell them what he was doing), but it’s impossible to do. His scrambling to save the good, the bad, the ugly, and the innocent from the inhumane end of a spy caught in the act is not commended. His concerns about damage control falling to him via bad planning is only met with a raised eyebrow and the Face of Disappointment.

“I realize you wouldn’t know this, Tony, but traditionally, that’s what omegas are supposed to do: keep it together behind the scenes.

“You put innocents on the front line.”

“It’s SHIELD. There are no innocents.” Tony doesn’t say anything after that, but approximately fifteen minutes after he did an about face and marched out of the conference room they use for these arguments, Steve receives a list of non-SHIELD deaths. He doesn’t include Hydra families, because apparently the alpha decides the fate of all the rest, but there are enough there that Steve is pale in the face and weak in the gut for weeks. After that, he starts listening to the damage control talks a little more. 

Tony recognizes the admission of his rightness for what it is, and knows if he brings it up, he’ll lose all progress. So he doesn’t. Just continues along in the same damn vein they’ve been in since the start of their long and increasingly more uncomfortable association.

Then Ultron happens, and the auxiliary project cum evil overlord almost costs Tony everything. He did Ultron, and everyone knows it. He throws himself harder into the rest of his projects. He calls Pepper, when he gets a moment to, and the plan to make SI relief a global, and not just an American, effort dominates all platforms of media, with charity events designed to cater to every walk of life and interest held once a week for two months straight.

Amdist that, quieter things happen. Steve adds Wanda to the team without consulting Tony. “That’s my duty,” he says to Tony.

“She played with our heads. We have no idea if she’s trustworthy. And I thought it was  _ our  _ duty.” That part gets ignored. Co-leader Tony’s ass. 

“And you’re any different? You don’t even smell like anything. How can I trust you when you won’t let me even sync with you and then run around down here making super secret murderous AIs?” And it’s a dig that hurts just as much as it’s meant to. The other omega- the one who showed him strange things that caused more fear than in years- practically leaks emotions. Every alpha and beta on the team wants to protect her. Protect her against the consequences of voluntary terrorism. Protect her against the consequences of making the co-leader of the Avengers wary and mistrustful. 

Tony wonders, briefly, what exactly Steve thinks he’s getting at by trying to get him to be a real omega and go off the pill. Howard had sneered at him over it too. In fact, he had coined the term “real omega”. It takes that conversation for Tony realizes that it isn't that Steve even wants him off the pill, anymore. It’s that he wants a reason to disregard Tony’s thinking. It doesn’t matter how much evidence there is that the billionaire is, in fact, rational and correct. If he doesn’t fall in line, Steve won’t believe him, and he has the perfect reason not to. 

When Tony’s especially mad, he lounges and thinks about how utterly unprepared Rogers would be for Tony, sans scent blockers. He imagines how shocked he would be when Tony’s anxiety ratchets through the roof at seeing Captain America, the man, never the legend, if he ever existed. He imagines how angry it would make him, when that happened every. Single. Time. He thinks about how the scent of fear would poison the entire floor whenever Tony had nightmares. How that smell would cling to him, and go stale and bad in his room, and spread to wherever he went.

He thinks about how put out Steve would be that he can’t fix it- not even a tiny piece of it- and how he would then deny. He would blame differences of opinion on Tony’s emotions. He would argue that Tony shouldn’t even be here because omegas aren’t meant to be that high strung and nervous. 

He thinks about the hypocrisy of it all, and lets himself smile, because it’s never going to happen. It will be Tony’s little fantasy, entirely too close to reality. It’s a good thing it will never be reality, either, because reality is enough of a bitch on its own. It doesn’t need any help. 

The civil war ends with the team split in half and the accords in shambles and Ross with the biggest, fattest, most beautiful, most expensive gift of an opportunity to exert too much control with too little oversight. Tony has to play the game for a little while (“just ‘till I can bring Cap home. Then I’ll go after the real issues.) and so he sucks ass and gargles balls and eventually finds his way to Siberia, only to discover Steve Roger’s one, last secret from when he brought down “hydra”/SHIELD. 

At that moment, Tony Stark is eight hours away from his last scent blocker. He’s run through almost his whole supply over this stupid, ridiculous ordeal, and he doesn’t have anymore on hand. . While in the suit, he can leak as much as he wants, and he’s got excellent control over himself, even if no one can tell. He only ever took blockers that kept his emotions from spilling over. They don't block their affect on him, nor did they stop him from smelling the pheromones on others.

At this moment, the burst of everything he feels is deafening and deadening. When he looks at Steve, he sees Obie. He sees his father. He sees every other alpha that lied to him because they thought they knew better. After the numbness, the fire catches, and the emotions all burn through the blockers the fastest they’ve ever done (he also hadn’t realized how much time he had left, since he’d been flying, and mistakenly assumed that ruminating wouldn’t cut short the blockers’ duration) and overwhelms him at the moment where, mentally, there is no longer a ground. 

Tony Stark has been up for thirty six hours in a row. He has not eaten in seven. As anyone knows, you can skip food, and you can forgo sleep, but you can’t do both at the same time. He’s already on edge, and he feels insane, and its enough to start a fight. 

His scent leaks up, unfettered and powerful, through the holes Steve and Bucky put in his armor. For the first time, Steve smells it, and just like Tony guessed, it still doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.

In the end, when he’s lying there with a broken reactor, he can’t help but laugh. He thought he could save their team. Turn from them from the legalities of it all. As it turns out, he no longer has the reach to. They sure as hell aren’t avengers, now. 

All of these things, Tony remembers from a hospital bed that he doesn’t recall getting to. His mind, all sluggish and nonfunctional after all these events, picks through the details, sees things in vivid, removed clarity. He lets himself remember it all, hate and laugh and cry on the inside and outside, because he will not be able to afford thinking about it again. 

His doctor- the one he has had since he was sixteen- has medical evidence that he cannot continue his scent blockers until he achieves emotional equilibrium. Even then, the chances are looking worse by the day. They would need to wait and see. His doctor, who Tony only trusts by virtue of a long and professional association, lays her hand against his cheek and looks into his eyes. 

He hears her promise him things like their continued association even past the point where others cannot go near him. Hears her promise him 24 hour support. She takes no other patients, and her retirement is waiting, but she wants to make it right for Tony Stark.

He thinks she may be the only one. 

He accepts all this, and he knows he has to, because the coming days are going to be a nightmare, with projects that he had not planned to implement suddenly becoming more important, and he without half the pack there to help him.

For all Tony’s flaws, he and the rest of the avengers had been a pack in their oddness, rather than their sameness, and it feels like half his heart has been cut out, now.  He knew there was a good reason for not being the kind of omega Steve would have loved to have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I didn't think this fic was going to be that popular lol. I love all the comments and the feedback and pleeease keep it up. The great news is that, even though there are only three chapters in this fic, there is another Avengers ABO fic on its way out, and I'm up to chapter five. For those of you who have been reading my work, you'll be really glad to know that the chapters are about four to five pages long, and not just two. That fic, which I think I'm going to call Do What I want, will go out a week after this one is finished. I love you all:)


	3. Never Will Be That Kind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark, off his scent blockers.

His doctor is a professional woman, and for that, he’s eternally grateful. As a post-menopausal beta, on long term scent blockers like himself, her scent is nonexistent. Even in the throws of the worst heat ever (and there haven’t been very many to begin with), Tony would not look to her. For that reason, and because he is literally her only patient since Doctor Mendoza is, in fact, about ten years past retirement age, and is only Tony’s doctor because… reasons?, she agrees to help Tony through his acclimatization.

It starts with a very abbreviated medical report given to the UN and the Accords council. It states that Anthony Edward Stark is, at forty seven years old, suffering trauma to the chest, which requires the replacement of his false sternum and various thoracic vertebrae, along with other lesser injuries which are beside the point. In addition to this, he is suffering from pack splitting, and packmate betrayal. As such, he will not be fit for duty for the next two months, at least, and while he should be up and functional enough to do things electronically, such as speak to the UN and Accords council, he will need to avoid making physical appearances until his mental and emotional levels are stable, and have reached equilibrium.  All of this is stated while Tony Stark is in surgery for a shield to the chest. 

Next, she agrees to oversee the top to bottom cleaning of every floor in the tower that belonged to any defective pack members. It’s not particularly doctorly, but she knows how to proof a building for the downward spiral that will be Anthony Edward Stark’s psyche in the next few months. In this, Miss Pepper Potts stands beside her, as well as Vision. Things are cleaned up, packed up, scrubbed off, and swept away. The entire tower is ventilated to suck out the smells, and all the furniture on the common floors, including the dishes, are sent for dry cleaning while the rooms themselves are scrubbed top to bottom. Many things are merely replaced. The rest they pack away for Tony to decide what to do with later.

The hole in the kitchen is repaired with nary a word. Tony is still in the hospital for the three days it takes to get everything out of the tower. He is still in the hospital for the three days it takes for him to be visitor ready. He is still in the hospital when, for the first time, he sees what’s left of his pack: Rhodey in his wheelchair, Vision with his broken heart, and Pepper, looking so, so sad, break-up or not.

When Tony comes back, still in a fragile state and tired to the bone, he can’t smell anyone. He hates it, but he knows it is the best. The people these scents belong to have left, and they have broken the pack bonds forged in uniqueness and common goals, and it will just make these coming weeks worse if he has to smell them every time he attempts to reintegrate. 

“Vis,” he says from his own wheelchair next to Rhodey’s.

“Sir.’

“I want you to decorate.”

“Why?” as a scentless android, Vision doesn’t quite understand why they have to get rid of all the furniture. He only knows that it hurts Mr. Stark to look at, and that it makes his own chest ache as well. He’s remembering what rubble looks like through a haze of red mist. He thinks that maybe decorating might not be a bad duty. 

“The old stuff can’t come back, and we can’t keep it a blank space, because all of you, like, exist, so we need someone to decorate, and you’ve probably never done it before.” he sounds satisfied at his logic, and Vision can’t argue. For the next hour or so, he and Vision sit, and Tony Stark shows him the world of Wish-I-Could Pinterest boards, and Vision learns quite a bit about taste.

Eventually, his doctor has to insist he rest. Tony reaches out and squeezes Pepper and Rhodey’s hands, and it tells them all they need to know: Tony isn’t mad. He doesn’t want them gone. He just won’t be able to have them around. 

Vision helps get him into bed, and Tony sleeps, his scent slowly leaking out to refill the room in a more vivid, more awake version of himself. No scent blockers now.

When he comes back to consciousness, two hours and one nightmare later, he finds he wishes he’d stay asleep, because now that he’s in his own bed, it’s difficult to ignore the reality of the situation. This is the part the doctor told him about. The part where it all goes to shit.

He ignores it at first, and begins to work on a pair of leg braces for his wheelchair bound friend. He manages to ignore it until he falls back asleep in the blue light of his holoscreens. It only gets harder from there. He only manages to ensure the rest of his pack one more time that it isn’t them before he disappears entirely.

They drop the temperature in his lab and his personal floor to lessen the amount he can smell. After Tony successfully, with the help of other, near scentless individuals his doctor trusts, passes the bar for not using a wheelchair, it is time to return to business. He doesn’t shower (because fuck that, he’s moping) but he does sit in the tub on a foot stool as his personal medical team sponges him down and washes his hair. 

It takes a whole hour and a half to get to sitting in pants and underwear and an undershirt and a shawl pepper left behind. Another two to get camera ready. As always, Tony Stark’s makeup is flawless. His taste is flawless. His everything is flawless for the cameras. He goes down to the lab, sits against one bared wall behind a new desk he’d had brought down here for this, and turns on the camera to connect him to the UN.

They inquire about his health. They inquire about the health of is remaining pack. Then they get down to business. Easy, simplistic, legalease filled business. He doesn’t think about why they discuss the things they do, only that they must.

It takes four months. During that time, the temperature gets lower, and the amount of clothes Tony wears gets heavier, and the video calls to the members of his pack get more infrequent and shorter as Tony tries to push through his hormonal disaster without breaking his brain and being hospitalized. 

He needs, essentially, to balance out and fill in the holes left by pack dissertation, as well as acclimatize and convince himself that what remains of his pack- Vision and Rhodey- and pack auxiliary members- Pepper, and, possibly, spiderling- without giving in to the fact that there are holes in the first place.

Doctor Mendoza helps with this. 

She makes sure Tony eats, doesn’t push him too hard to sleep, and does push for his space. She brings news and pictures across the barrier to each part of the tower. She shows Tony how Vision is taking this decorating thing very seriously, the expression on Rhodey’s face when he received the file for the leg braces, and small smile Pepper gives the camera when Tony designs a nearly fanatically cheerful Happy Birthday! digital card for her. The latter is on one of those days where he can’t do faces, so he doesn't see it for a few days.

As the temperature gets lower, the board grows more concerned. If Tony dies due to pack separation, they’re going to in hell trying to find his replacement. He’s also a brilliant man. They inquire more earnestly after his health, and the makeup might hide his darkened undereyes but it doesn’t say a word against how thin he’s getting. Doctor or no, it’s very hard for Tony to get food down. 

Eventually, though, at the four month mark, the temperature reads two degrees higher, not lower, than it was before, and while Doctor Mendoza is very much concerned for his weight loss and his health and afraid of the false calm phenomenon, she can’t help but be grateful. Tony Stark is going to make it.

Tony Stark will live.

She texts a picture of the temperature to all concerned parties still in the Tower, and it seems like the storm has broken, despite nearly blowing the houses down.

 

…

 

It’s not easy going, but eventually, the rogue Avengers find their way home. Before the ink of their signatures has dried on the page, things go exactly the way they aren’t supposed to. They are not taken to the Tower, or the Compound, but some sort of specially built Super Individual Interim Program, or SIIP. SIIP is not like anything they wanted. They wanted Tony. They wanted Rhodey and Vision. They wanted things to go back to normal.

Instead they got something uncomfortably “unwelcome guest” like. They have jobs, now. Duties, responsibilities outside of superheroing. Things that their clearance to fight depends on. They have to do them and do them well or they will not ever get back out there. 

They find themselves thousands of dollars in debt, due to damages in Bucharest and Lagos. Mail, addressed to Stark Tower and the Accords council since there was no where else to send it, details how much they ruined this or that life, how people hoped they got exactly what they felt was not coming to them.

But these things that happen now, two years after the Avengers Civil War, are not a surprise. They’d been briefed, heavily, on everything that ever went wrong with them, and everything that would happen because of it. So they have to deal with things they never thought they’d deserve, but they know they do now.

Steve has to swallow his pride when people won’t call him Captain, other than as part of his superhero name (and that has been revoked until further notice). 

Sam has to swallow his pride when he reads “dishonorably discharged; rank reduced” with his name attached to it.

Clint has to swallow his pride, when he reads that the farm isn’t there anymore, that Laura and the kids have gone into hiding to stay safe.

Scott has to swallow his pride when the ant-man suit is repossessed by Pym Industries. And he’s given a stack of legal papers, both from his breaking of probation and those he stole from.

Wanda has to swallow her pride, when all the red in the world doesn’t fix the fact that the only place where she had some sort of autonomy won’t open to her after she injured it. She has to deal with Immigration and psychologists and various others and all the pheromones in the world won’t fix shit. 

Widow has to swallow her pride when she realizes that no friend from before would be here now. Not when she destroyed it all at the airport and before, at SHIELD.

They have to swallow their pride when they’re told the only reason they’re back is Thanos. They have to swallow their pride when all of them are eventually upgraded to probationary superheroes to fight him, and they’re split up and bussed out for training with different teams that don’t have each other on it. They do it again, when no one trusts a Captain to lead or a witch not to manipulate.

They do it again, and again, and again, hoping that just maybe, in the back of their minds, changing their behavior towards everything would grant them a second chance at a pack with omega whose scent is as flat as a pool table, but who managed to turn them into family anyways, just by accepting their differences and attempting to build off it.

But then Thanos is gone, and they’re allowed the news, now. It’s all over the place how Tony Stark has ceased taking scent blockers due to medical complications. There is no satisfaction in it for Steve, who drove the omega away before he ever heard what Tony had to say. They see Tony Stark’s new pack, all proud and strong with the Vision and Captain Marvel and the Spiderling and even Loki, for fuck's sake, on it, and the hope shrivels and dies in their chests. Finally, finally, after three years, one month, and three days, the reality of their situation sets in: they are never going back. 

Tony Stark never was the sort of omega who would just let a backstabber back in. Not even for the sake of a pack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god we're at the end! So because I like this rhythm, I'm going to go ahead and post the first chapter of my other ABO work, Dissention today and not in a week from today because impatience. I would love to know what you guys think of both:)


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